[SBE] Wilmington test

[Bill Whitt]

I would love to read the article as well. Local businesses have been calling
my station asking questions that their customers have posed to them while
searching for the right convertor box. I would love to have a edited article
to forward to them with your findings. This could help out a ton.

 

Bill Whitt

 

From: sbe-bounces at sbe.org [mailto:sbe-bounces at sbe.org] On Behalf Of Carl
Sundberg
Sent: Thursday, September 11, 2008 3:13 PM
To: sbe member discussion mail list
Subject: [SBE] Wilmington test

 

Hi All,

 

I'm a guy who likes to really check things out before I'm going to be put on
the spot. I knew that I had to forget everything I knew about RF and try to
be more like my viewers long before the analog TV shut off date. Toward that
end, I bought every kind of indoor antenna I could find, both new and used
from places like Goodwill and tried them all. I bought 5 digital TV's and
bought every converter box I could get my hand on, also both new and old. I
soon realized the real challenge my viewers were going to have with DTV and
here is what I learned:

 

There are a lot of indoor antenna's that should be recycled. Antenna's that
pick up well from all directions really give a DTV receiver or converter box
a lot of trouble. While investigating, I found out that multipath caused by
stuff in the home is real and it really bothers DTV. Investigating with a
DTV analyzer, a spectrum analyzer and a directional antenna, I found out the
biggest enemy in the home is the refrigerator, large silver coated mirrors
and large appliances like stoves and the washer/dryer. These babies make
great signal reflectors. If you do the math, every digital bit transmitted
in DTV can be canceled out by an out of phase signal less than a room away.
In my home, no indoor antenna worked 100% on all stations until I put it
near the gabled ceiling to minimize reflections from those objects. The
stations with the strongest signals had the biggest problem.

 

In addition to that, I have been taking calls at my station daily from
people who are having trouble with indoor antenna's with both receivers and
converter boxes and my experimenting was a good thing. So far, I have been
able to help because I've used what they are trying to use.

 

Because of this, I decided to write an article that I hope our station will
add to our web site. I have attached it and hope all will read it, edit it,
change the graphics if you find betters ones and correct any misinformation
or add anything you see fit. I think its up to us to come up with something
for our viewers to refer to that will make them smarter, like the computer
people did when they wanted us to throw away our typewriters. I look forward
to hearing about anything I missed or suggestions before I post it. 

 

So far, nothing I have found tells the whole story. As crazy as this may
seem, for a long time, I couldn't figure out where three multipath signals
were coming from until I tracked one down to a mirror. I've never seen an
article mention a mirror as a source of mutipath and that was the strongest
multipath signal I found. When I found it, I went, "Duh! How could I be so
stupid? It's a sliver coated reflector. What could be more perfect for
reflecting RF?"

 

Read on, make changes and send your version back if you think this is a
worthwhile.

 

 

Carl Sundberg
3318 Coraly Ave.
Eugene, OR 97402-6544 

 

Cell: 541 520-2867
Landline: 541 461-2324 

 

 

 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://seven.pairlist.net/pipermail/sbe/attachments/20080912/3668b1b5/attachment.htm>